Building/home automation devices are intended to enable energy efficient climate control, provide comfort and security to the residents of a house. Wireless alternatives such as Zigbee, Internet Engineering Task Force Internet of things (IETF IoT) stack is an attractive option for implementing communication in a home or residential automation system considering the ease of deployment and retrofitting to older buildings.
However connectivity of wireless links based on a wireless communication network using a communication technology such as IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6L0WPAN), Zigbee etc. can degrade due to interference, obstruction etc.
In order to improve user experience as well as to implement a more effective automation system, it is imperative that faults in the network are easily identified and connectivity is quickly restored. However many industrial networks such as 6L0WPAN and Zigbee based networks do not provide a solution for monitoring of wireless links which will enable quick detection of broken links. Furthermore, it is possible that a user of the automation system does not have the ability to communicate with the wireless communication network using the communication technology employed by the automation system.
There is therefore a need for addressing some or all of the above-mentioned problems.